April 2017. It's the day before the last subject of my final exams. After the bell rings, I leave the testing room filled with disappointment. It’s raining outside, and  I was hoping that it would have stopped after the exam finished, but the rain is still pouring down. I reach my hand to feel the colorless, cold, and heavy raindrops on my skin before my brother pat my shoulder softly, “Hey did you bring an umbrella?” I feel my half-empty school bag with my freezing hand before I shake my head. I must have forgiven it at home. He takes off his school bag and places it over my head. “What about you?” I ask as I push his bag away. “Oh yeah, actually we can just run instead.” He runs towards the bus stop while I follow him. The air is colder than usual, and the sky is gloomy and covered by black and gray clouds while the buildings on the side of the road are blurred by the pouring rain. I run carefully, trying to avoid the deep puddles on the sidewalk, the smell of the fresh-cut grass is in the air, and I am greeted by a sinking sun instead of a warm sunray. We stop running when we reach the red bus stop sign. Everyone is rushing under the bridge for cover, and hoping the rain will stop soon. I take my ticket out of my pocket and notice that my light pink uniform is painted by raindrops. It’s even colder now. My brother and I stand by the wall while we wait silently for our bus to come. I try not to think about my social studies exam that I messed up today or the wet notes in my bookbag that I wrote for my exam tomorrow.

            I pick the window seat, and my brother takes off his school bags and carefully places them next to me. I unzip my backpack and look for my math notes.  Half of them are soggy, so I guess I’m not studying on the bus today. I turn to look outside. The pouring rain is wiping away the fog on the window, and I lean closer to the window to peek through the clear trail that the rain leaves behind. The view is still the same: the same tall trees, the same tall buildings, and the same traffic jam. This is going to be a long ride. “Aren’t you going to study,” my brother asks. I show him my half-ruined notes. “It’s over, I’m going to fail.” “But it’s just a few pages of notes, it's not a big deal.” “You don’t understand because mum never cares about your grades anyway, do you even care about your grade?” He looks away, “It’s just an exam, a grade, I would be satisfied if I did my best”. He closes his eyes and falls asleep with his head on his soaked school bag peacefully. I can tell he’s shivering a little bit, so I stand up and twist the switch off the air conditioner above his head. I sit back down and continue to try to study the dry parts of my math notes while a soft Taylor Swift song plays in my headphones, and calms me down and helps me focus.

           The moon is high when we arrived home. I enter my room to change into my oversized t-shirt and then continue to study. I decide to open the window. Outside, the rain has finally stopped, leaving behind this refreshing scent of pine tree even though there aren’t any near my house. The cold wind blows on my face as I’m writing down more notes underneath the glow of my warm-toned lamp. I get tired of the sound of the calculator clicking, and my messy notes with eraser crumbs all over them. I decided to grab a quick snack in the kitchen. I pass my brother’s room as I return to my room, and notice that his light is already off, except for that dim lamp on his desk. He already went to sleep. I sneak in to turn off his lamp, and I notice the notebook on his desk. I pick it up slowly to avoid making a sound, thinking “Ugh, this kid never packs his school bag.” Searching for his school bag in the dark, I can barely see anything but I can feel that something slipped out of his notebook. I turn on the lamp again to look for the missing paper on the ground. I flip through the pages to slip the missing paperback in, and the notebook is full of colorful notes and a lot of practice pape., I thought that he never put any effort in his studying, and that’s why he always has low grades. My parents never have high expectations for him. I’m always jealous that my parents have lower expectations of him, and I always compare my grades with him to make myself feel better.  Now I regret it after seeing all the effort that he made. It must have hurt him a lot. I close his door quietly after putting his notes back in his school bag. I sit down, looking at my own shadow, and start to wonder about my future.  A bunch of thoughts comes rushing into my head. What should I do if I fail my test? Will I do not get into a good middle school, and then I won’t get into a college? Will my parents be disappointed in me? My thoughts stop when the clock ticking on my plain wall attracts my attention. The hour hand and the minute hand both land on 12. I instantly panic because I’ve only gone over half of the questions, and there’s no way that I can finish all of the reviews in one night. I adjust my lamp and tie up my hair to wake myself up. “Guess this is going to be a long night!” I say to myself as I wipe the eraser crumbs off of my notebook.

           The next morning, I feel my pulse quicken as I enter the same classroom door. Everyone is already seated, and waiting for the bell to ring and the teacher to arrive. I pull out my cold chair and sit down as I sink into my thoughts: “Will my effort and all these sleepless nights pay off? What will the test be like?’’My friend seems to notice me and asks, “Hey are you okay?” I nod while noticing the dark circles on her face. Maybe that’s what I look like right now, too, but there’s no time to worry about that right now. It’s time to remember what I studied yesterday. When we can hear footsteps approaching us, we know the time has come. We give each other a last hug and run back to our testing seats, waiting.

            “Hi, you can call me Miss Chan! I’m going to be your invigilator today.  We will go over the instructions and you can start the exam when the bell rings.” She picks up a piece of white chalk and begins to write “Last Day of Finals” on the empty, greenish blackboard. She passes out our math finals, and the paper is about ten-pages, printed on this yellowish, recycled paper. Unable to focus, I stare at the blank back page of my exam. The thin, sharp paper makes me curious about what the exam is going to be like. I peek at the outline of a question, and I know this is not going to be easy. “Beep!Beep!” The bell rings, and  I pick up my pencil with one hand while the other hand flips my exam paper. It’s like a race. The sound of paper flipping fills the room and overwhelms the sound of the bell, quickly followed by the sound of pencils writing and calculators clicking. Distracted by all my thoughts, I freeze for thirty seconds. I can hear my own breathing, and my heartbeat racing, as I attempt to stay focused. I start to look at the first question: hmm, I know this, and oh I know the next one, too! I scan the whole paper, and I begin to find my pace while the sweat on my palms begins to disappear and my mind is finally focused.

         After finishing my very last question, I look at the round, small, old clock across the room. I have fifteen minutes left. I let out a big breath, feeling relieved. It’s like I’m free from all the stress that I have kept inside me for weeks. That was easier than I expected, and the questions turned out to be extremely similar to the questions I studied yesterday. I didn’t regret not sleeping yesterday, but I’m definitely going to sleep now. Under the sun that sneaks in through the window, I put both of my hands on my desk and place my head above them, wrapping myself up from this cold air conditioner in the room and closing my eyes to rest for a while until the bell rings excitedly. “BEEP BEEP!” “Alright put down your pencils, pass down your tests!” I pass down my warm exam paper, and at that moment, everyone begins to chat. The nervous looks on their faces from earlier have disappeared, and are replaced by big smiles. “Okay guys you can go now, that’s your last test in primary school! Have fun and relax!” Miss. Chan leaves the room with our papers in her hand, and we know it’s over when the sound of her heels has disappeared. We jump out of our seats to find our best friends and hug each other. Maybe we all realize that the school year is gone, and the only thing left is our graduation ceremony. We will say goodbye to each other very soon. All of us leave our classroom with a little bit of sadness in our eyes. The four poorly painted blue walls that we decorated together, and with our picture hanging over them, will soon be empty again and will be replaced with pictures of unfamiliar faces. The old desk drawers will not be filled with our stuff ever again, and instead will have new owners. And the dirty blackboards that we are all cleaned together may have the same stuff written on them, but we will not be the one who is there to watch it fill up. I slowly walk out of the room and run downstairs to meet my brother by the school gate.

    He’s earlier than me today.  As I step out of the shadows, the sun bursts out of the clouds and warms my skin. We start walking when we notice that the road seems different today. I notice a blooming flower on the side of the rocky road that’s still wet from yesterday’s rain. The yellow, airy petals are dazzling under the bright, hot sun. Bees buzz around me, and in all the buildings around us people have pulled up their curtains to let the sun in. I kind of like this weather. Walking on this spring-filled street makes us sweat though, and we hurry to the bus station before our sweat drowns us out.

                  The bus arrives just in time, and we swipe our cards and run to our favorite seats: the seat at the front of the second row. The seats sit right in front of clear glass that wraps around the front of the bus so that we can see all the views from there. “So how was your test today?” I ask my brother who looks extra excited., “It was okay. I think I’m slowly realizing my old study method doesn’t work because I worked so hard but I just never get a good grade!” “I will help you study then! Let’s not talk about school right now. : Let’s get dessert at the mall next to the metro station. I will treat you a meal!!” His smile is even more precious in the sunlight, and soon he slowly closes his eyelids. I put in my earbuds, and listen to the same song from yesterday, but now with a different view outside of the window. Even though there’s still a traffic jam today, I enjoy the sun’s reflection on the cars. I also notice a new park has opened down the street, and how the sun paints the deep gray street golden after the storm. I also like how I feel after the exam; I feel relieved and relaxed, like my hard work eventually paid off.

In the end, I graduated from primary school and got into a middle school that I liked. After that exam, I also learned to start balancing my life and studies, and soon realized how grades aren’t everything. My brother’s grades improved as I helped him study, but I always tell him that his grades don’t determine his value. He got into my class the next year and picked the same seat as me. Sometimes when I listen to the same Taylor Swift song from that day on the bus, It takes me back to the time when my brother had his head resting gently on my shoulder as our bus drove on under the sun and the view that we never get to see anymore.